If you miss a pick, you will be eligible for a default pick, up to a maximum of 7 default picks.

This tournament uses community defaults. Instead of our old system where you would be allocated the home team in a default pick, you will instead receive the team which the community as a whole expects to win, based on the entire field of picks at kick-off.

Community defaults more accurately capture the purpose of defaults, which is to anticipate what a player might have picked had they been able to make their pick. The former home team system felt unfair when a weak team unexpectedly won at home against a strong team - in a pool the person who received a default would score a point while everyone else, who picked the strong team, would not score points.

Default picks do not have margins, and can thus only earn Win Points (if the default team does in fact win). No Margin Points or Bonus Points can be won with a default pick, and a player who defaults on one or more games in a round is disqualified from Grand Slam Points.

A default pick is not an automatic point. It is only awarded if the default team wins, and all it tries to do is guess what you would have picked if you had been able to make the pick.

If this tournament has knockout rounds towards its final stages (e.g. playoffs, quarter-finals, semi-finals or a final), defaults will not apply to these rounds.

We use the default pick system because we don't want people who miss a game or two to feel like they've fallen behind and that there's not much point in continuing. We think the default safety net is reasonable, especially because it's tightly controlled by only a few defaults being available for each tournament. Long-term defaulting gets you nowhere.

You are eligible for 7 default picks.